SCOTT AND KATHY FORMBY, CO-CREATORS OF THE NEW FASHION LABEL NO.1808, APPLY THEIR CAREFULLY HONED AESTHETIC AT HOME IN AMAGANSETT, IN A 1982 HOUSE DESIGNED BY JULIAN AND BARBARA NESKI

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WOODLAND HIDEAWAY (click photo for larger view)

A STRIKINGLY MODERN HOUSE IN THE
Amagansett woods was not what Kathy and Scott Formby had in mind when they started searching for a weekend place in the early 1990s. "We soon found that the typical shingled Hamptons farmhouse has small windows and chopped-up rooms, and we thought, maybe we should look at something more modern," Kathy Formby recalls. Then they saw "this amazing structure, like a tree house in the woods"—and were sold. Theirs isn't just any modern house. It is one of 35 innovative homes, many on the East End, designed by Julian and Barbara Neski, the distinguished architectural team behind the famous fin-shaped 1964 Chalif house in East Hampton and the white-cube 1968 Cates house in Amagansett. The Formbys' home is a fine example of, as the New York Times put it in Julian Neski's 2004 obituary, "functionalist simplicity combined with sculpturally expressive form."

Built in 1982, the three-bedroom, two-bath house is an L-shaped arrangement of cedar-clad boxes, with partly enclosed decks off every room. The whole is cantilevered several feet above the ground. "Because it was in these woods, it had to be a tree house," recalls Barbara Neski, "and you had to be able to run a car underneath it. That was nothing new—Corbu did that years ago—but we knew it had to perch."

EASY LIVING (click photo for larger view)

"We're living in the trees, at eye level with leaves and branches," says Scott Formby. "One wall of the main room is all glass, so as the trees change with the seasons, the color of the room changes too." The Formbys are so fond of the two-acre property's established beeches and oaks that they scrapped the idea of a swimming pool because, as Kathy says, "We just didn't have the heart to chop down the trees."